Edited by author 11-03-2009 10:55 PM
A lot of highly questionable, mostly very politicized (as opposed to scientific and ethical), views about the diagnosis of Asperger's http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/health/03asperger.html http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health...nge/article1350207/ http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2009/11/03/...dsm-psychiatry.html

Neither story from the Canadian media includes any views quoted from autistics or from researchers.

In the NYT, Catherine Lord's relevant conflicts of interest are not reported. She developed and owns the two "gold-standard" autism diagnostic instruments, neither of which includes any established way to distinguish autism from Asperger's. This makes her views unsurprising. Also, the fact that many clinicians diagnose autism according to free-for-all-type standards does not mean that this is okay.

Re Asperger's and "mild" autism or "severity" of autism and generally the arbitrariness and expediency with which autistics are often ranked and classified, there are two quotes from the literature here http://autismcrisis.blogspot.com/2009/01/v...utism-severity.html